May 24 Solo: A Star Wars Story Review (English)

So there are a lot of people on the internet, trying to boycott this movie because of whatever reasons. Let me just start this review by saying: It is a good adventure movie with nice fan service that does not feel like it is forced on it.

The story follows the young Han Solo. From how he meets Chewie to how he gets the Millennium Falcon. I don’t want to get into the story that heavily because it is nothing special at all. It serves as a nice driving force for the characters but could have done a little more to discover more about our favorite smuggler.

A lot of people stated that Alden Ehrenreich can not fill the big steps of Harrison Ford, and therefore they dislike the movie by default. How in the world should he be able to step in his footsteps? Of course he does not bring the same charisma and charm to the screen as Ford, but that is no problem at all. It is about the character developing. And Ehrenreich did a fine job to fit at least my expectation of how Han Solo would react in those situations as a young adult.

My personal highlight was Donald Glovers performance as Lando Calrissian, but I have to say that I am a huge Glover Fan so that might not be the case for everyone. Emilia Clark played a nice role as Solos love interest, but does nothing special that really stood out to me. I kind of forgot that she was in the movie to be honest. But her character and her history made me really curious about what happened to her, between the time she and Han were separated.

The least likeable character was definitely the Droid L3. It only served to bring some feminism and pseudo politics into the movie. It was not really taking anything away from the movie, but at some parts really annoyed me. From reading articles on the internet I can assume that I’m not alone with my opinion. But that should not be the reason to boycott this movie (as some clickbait YouTube Channels are claiming). Bringing a political message into a movie is nothing big anymore. Studios do this all the time. If you get triggered by 5 minutes of this that you want your fan base to boycott the movie, you are the problem.

The last main character is Woody Harrelson Tobias Beckett, which at first was interesting. But as the movie developed, he fell of and became the least interesting character to follow.

Alden Ehrenreich als junger Han Solo

I watched the movie on "IMAX with Laser" on one of the biggest silver screens in the world and the optics did not disappoint me. It felt like they had a healthy difference of CGI and real sets. The soundtrack was solid. For me it had a little bit to less Star Wars sound but that is the direction I wanted to go the “Star Wars Story” movies anyways. Different from what we know and ready to show a new perspective at the War in Star Wars.

The movie brings in a good amount of fan service. Compared to Rouge One it never feels forced. For example: the scene from Rouge One where Darth Vader shows up and slaughters the Rebel Solders might look awesome as hell and makes scream in joy. For me it just felt forced by the studio.

I liked Solo: A Star Wars Story much more then Rouge One just because of the following fact. It works as a non Star Wars Film as well! I went to see it with my girlfriend who has never seen a Star Wars movie other then Episode 7. And she liked the movie even without knowing who the characters are or what they will become. I feel like this movie would have been a solid adventure movie even without the Star Wars brand. I had a lot of fun during the 2 hour and 15 minutes of runtime.

It serves as an introduction the the franchise even if you never watched a single Star Wars movie and makes you curious what will happen next. It is accessible to all kinds of audiences and makes you feel entertained for almost the entire runtime. Even though the story is very flat it serves as a nice line, where the filmmakers put some nice scenes around to shape a well rounded action adventure. If you like what you see in the trailer, go check out Solo: A Star Wars Story in your nearest Cinema. Its better then “The Last Jedi”.

Oh by the way. For those who have an IMAX Cinema near by: It is not really a "must see in IMAX" movie. It was digitally remastered to be in IMAX. The colors are nice and the sound is awesome, but the camerawork does not capitalize from this.